ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum review -
The GF110 graphics processor

The GF110 graphics processor

After the GTX 480 release, NVIDIA went back to the drawing board and introduced a new revision based on the GF100 ASIC, now labeled as the GF110.

With this release, NVIDIA has a full range of products out on the market from top to bottom. All the new graphics adapters are of course DirectX 11 ready. With Windows 7 and Vista also being DX11 ready, all we need are some games to take advantage of DirectCompute, multi-threading, hardware tessellation and the new shader 5.0 extensions. DX11 is good and once tessellation kicks into games, better looking.

GeForce GTX 580 : 512 SP, 384-bit, 243W TDP

GeForce GTX 480 : 480 SP, 384-bit, 250W TDP

GeForce GTX 470 : 448 SP, 320-bit, 225W TDP

The GPU that empowers it all has small architectural changes, some stuff was stripped away and some additional functional units for tessellation, shading and texturing have been added. Make note that the GPU is still big, as the fabrication node is still 40nm. TSMC canceled the 32nm fab node preventing this chip from being smaller.

The GF100 and GF110 graphics processors both have sixteen shader clusters embedded in them (called SMs). For the GeForce GTX 480, one such a cluster was disabled and on the GeForce GTX 470, two were actually disabled. The GTX 580 has the full 512 shader processors activated, meaning a notch more performance just based on that alone already. So that's 512 shader processors, 32 more than the GTX 480 had.

Finally, to find some additional performance, the card got clocked a chunk faster at 772 MHz as well, whereas the GeForce GTX 480 was clocked at 700 MHz.

GeForce9800 GTX

GeForce GTX285

GeForce GTX295

GeForce GTX470

GeForce GTX480

GeForce GTX580

Stream (Shader) Processors

128

240

240 x2

448

480

512

Core Clock (MHz)

675

648

576

607

700

772

Shader Clock (MHz)

1675

1476

1242

1215

1400

1544

Memory Clock (effective MHz)

2200

2400

2000

3350

3700

4000

Memory amount

512 MB

1024 MB

1792 MB

1280 MB

1536 MB

1536 MB

Memory Interface

256-bit

512-bit

448-bit x2

320-bit

384-bit

384-bit

Memory Type

gDDR2

gDDR3

gDDR3

gDDR5

gDDR5

gDDR5

HDCP

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Two Dual link DVI

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

HDMI

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Memory wise NVIDIA has large and expensive memory volumes due to their architecture, we pass 1 GB as standard these days for most of NVIDIA's series 400 and 500 graphics cards. Each memory partition utilizes one memory controller on the respective GPU, which will get 256MB of memory tied to it.

As you can understand, the massive memory partitions, bus-width and combination of GDDR5 memory (quad data rate) allow the GPU to work with a very high framebuffer bandwidth (effective). Let's put most of the data in a chart to get an idea and overview of changes:

Graphics card

GeForce GTX 470

GeForce GTX 480

GeForce GTX 580

ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum

Fabrication node

40nm

40nm

40nm

40nm

Shader processors

448

480

512

512

Streaming Multiprocessors (SM)

14

15

16

16

Texture Units

56

60

64

64

ROP units

40

48

48

48

Graphics Clock (Core)

607 MHz

700 MHz

772 MHz

816 MHz

Shader Processor Clock

1215 MHz

1401 MHz

1544 MHz

1632 MHz

Memory Clock / Data rate

837 MHz / 3348 MHz

924 MHz / 3696 MHz

1000 MHz / 4000 MHz

1000 MHZ / 4000 MHz

Graphics memory

1280 MB

1536 MB

1536 MB

1536 MB

Memory interface

320-bit

384-bit

384-bit

384-bit

Memory bandwidth

134 GB/s

177 GB/s

192 GB/s

200 GB/s

Power connectors

2x6-pin PEG

1x6-pin PEG, 1x8-pin PEG

1x6-pin PEG, 1x8-pin PEG

2x8-pin PEG,

Max board power (TDP)

215 Watts

250 Watts

244 Watts

260 Watts

Recommended Power supply

550 Watts

600 Watts

600 Watts

600 Watts

GPU Thermal Threshold

105 degrees C

105 degrees C

97 degrees C

97 degrees C

So we talked about the core clocks, specifications and memory partitions. Obviously there's a lot more to talk through. Now, at the end of the pipeline we run into the ROP (Raster Operation) engine and the GTX 580 again has 48 units for features like pixel blending and AA.

There's a total of 64 texture filtering units available for the GeForce GTX 580. The math is simple here, each SM has four texture units tied to it.

GeForce GTX 470 has 14 SMs X 4 Texture units = 56

GeForce GTX 480 has 15 SMs X 4 Texture units = 60

GeForce GTX 580 has 16 SMs X 4 Texture units = 64

Though still a 40nm based chip, the GF110 GPU comes with almost 3 billion transistors embedded into it. The TDP remains the same at roughly 240~250 Watts, while performance goes up ~20%.

TDP = Thermal Design Power. Roughly translated, when you stress everything on the graphics card 100%, your maximum power consumption is the TDP.

The GeForce GTX 580 at standard comes with both a 6-pin and 8-pin power connector to get enough current and a little spare for overclocking. The ROG MAtrix edition however have a 19 phase power design, you'll spot two 8-pin connectors on this board.

ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum reviewWe received that big'ass Republic of Gamers (ROG) MATRIX GTX 580 graphics card from ASUS. The Republic of Gamers MATRIX GTX 580 Platinum graphics card is powered by an extensive 19-phase VRM circuitry that draws power from two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. The card will come with two BIOSes, so should you mess one up you have a failsafe by pressing a button. Something interesting is on-the-fly fan RPM control, check the photo's later on for that feature.

ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II SLI reviewWe review the GTX 580 DirectCU-II and it is one big momma ! ASUS shortly ago released a new version in the flagship series of NVIDIA graphics card, the GeForce GTX 580. They customized the graphics card itself, overclocked it, allow even more tweaking and to top it off, they placed a three slot wide cooling solution on it. heck let's test two of these in an SLI setup.

ASUS GTX560 DirectCU II reviewThe ASUS GTX560 DirectCU II or SKU name ENGTX560 TI-DCII tested today indeed comes all customized and factory overclocked, with quality grade components and a robust build the dark PCB of the GTX560 DirectCU II will carry a GPU clocked at 900 MHz and memory at 4200 MHz, both thus a nice chunk faster than reference.